Overcrowding in the Northeast puts schools in ‘crisis mode,’ staff says

While some city schools have hundreds of empty seats, a swath of schools in Northeast Philadelphia are so overcrowded that students there are learning in hallways and in repurposed closets.

“We cannot service our students,” said Mickey Komins, principal of Anne Frank Elementary. He said the school currently educates 1,630 students with 150 staff but has a building capacity of 1,360. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it — we cannot service our students.”

The Philadelphia School District is in the midst of a facilities master planning process that will likely result in school closings, colocations, and new construction. Several principals sounded the alarm at a public meeting Monday designed to inform the eventual plan, which is not set to be finalized until December 2025 and will take years more to execute.

» READ MORE: Expect a preliminary list of Philly school closings next fall. But some of those buildings might get new life as community hubs.

Bianca Gillis, the principal of Baldi Middle School, said her school has 1,548 students and 200 staff right now, already putting it more than 400 people over building capacity. Baldi’s four feeder schools — Anne Frank, Fox Chase, Comly, and Loesche — are on track to send 638 sixth graders next fall; it has room for only 525, even with its new trailers.

“We need some short-term solutions to our problems,” said Gillis at the Monday listening session. “We’re getting students every single week. We’re all packed to the gills.”

Gillis was one of the principals from Learning Network 10, a group of elementary and middle schools in the Northeast, who spoke out. Komins, the Anne Frank principal, said the schools were in “crisis mode.”

Immigration is fueling the population boom. Angelique Leizerowicz-Taylor, the principal of Fox Chase Elementary, said she enrolls students daily; last week, nine students registered — all of whom were English-language learners.

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At Anne Frank, 700 of the school’s 1,635 students are English-language learners, and 200 more students are former ELL students who have successfully exited the program.

“We welcome them, we love them, we care for them, but we can’t service them if we have to send them to another school,” said Komins.

Several Northeast schools are so far beyond capacity that they are capped — and cannot accept new students who register. Anne Frank is closed to new kindergarten and second-grade students; they are sent to Fox Chase, 15 minutes away.

Fox Chase, Leizerowicz-Taylor said, is close to capping kindergarten and third graders. In the meantime, students and staff must cope with a portion of the building that floods when it rains, has no bathrooms, and has classrooms so small they can barely fit the 33 students they often must hold.

“I have staff members in closets,” Leizerowicz-Taylor said. “We have found every space that we could possibly use to put people.”

Loesche Elementary is sized for 930 students; it educates 1,300. Principal Sherin Kurian has been forced to create several co-taught classrooms with two teachers and almost 50 students in a single room.

“We had to make it work with the growing number of students in every grade,” Kurian said. “With limited space, it’s not fair or equitable to the students and staff.”

Almost 70% of Loesche students are English-language learners who require support. No ELL teacher has a dedicated classroom; all are operating off carts, as are all but one of the school’s specialist teachers. Small-group instruction often happens in hallways, and the school doesn’t have a single room to add another class.

Loesche assistant principal Marilynn Szarka urged district officials to think about the implications of having specialist teachers without classrooms, forced to take materials from class to class, even with talented, dedicated educators at the helm.

“There’s no art room, no room to spread out,” said Szarka. “It’s limited by what can be hauled up the stairs and down. … What kind of quality are they receiving to be able to have them have that love of science or art?”

At Crossan Elementary, which operates with 328 students in a small, 100-year-old building, “we have class in the hallways,” said principal Khadijah Bright.

J. Hampton Moore Elementary has 1,200 students and is receiving students from five other Northeast schools. Principal Timothy Glynn said his teachers are also conducting classes in hallways, with room dividers separating hallways when possible.

“It’s despicable,” said Glynn. “We do a great job, the best we can, but that’s not the way these students should be serviced.”

Glynn said he was particularly concerned about the rising special education population, students whose needs are often complex. He said he had to open a “small, closet-sized room” to create an autistic support class of six to eight students; another autistic support class has up to 14 students, a very large size for such a class.

“We truly are over capacity, top to bottom, geographically, to the point where I don’t know a solution other than building more schools, and I don’t think one’s enough,” Glynn said of the Northeast population boom. The district opened Northeast Community Propel Academy in Mayfair in 2021 to alleviate overcrowding, and it’s already over capacity, Glynn said.

Komins agreed: The only answer he sees is another building, or repurposing a building that’s already in existence, like a Catholic school. Many families have fled to charter schools, and more could leave the district, he said.

“This is panic time,” Komins said. “This isn’t, let’s wait and see. … We’re not servicing our communities; we’re not serving the students who are moving into our areas. We’re serving who we can, and then we’re shuffling the others around.”

Oz Hill, interim deputy superintendent for operations, ran the Monday session, which was held virtually. He thanked the principals for speaking up and urged them to keep doing so.

“This is a plan that is going to provide some recommendations,” Hill said. “Under the most ideal conditions, if we were given whatever the number is — for the sake of discussion, let’s say, $10 billion — I still would not be able to respond quickly enough to resolve or relieve the pressures that you’re feeling, that you’re experiencing, that our students are experiencing.”

Hill offered no solutions but promised to elevate the Northeast schools’ concerns. He said that as a parent, he would find overcrowded conditions “unacceptable. I would not want my daughters to be in these schools if they were school-aged children. It’s not lost on me.”

Community members Horace and Gail Clouden, longtime activists based in West Philadelphia, offered one solution — busing students from the Northeast to West Philadelphia and other areas of the city that have excess capacity.

“This is a great opportunity — put [students] on the bus and have them come to schools that are half full,” said Gail Clouden, who’s known as Mama Gail. “And the question would be, ‘Why not? Why aren’t we thinking on those terms?’”

Hill said no decisions have been made, but “all of it’s on the table.”